


No Space, Wrong Time

by ProperPunctuation



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-20
Updated: 2019-12-20
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:54:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21869362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProperPunctuation/pseuds/ProperPunctuation
Summary: You’d been waiting a hundred and thirteen years for this dumbass to kiss you, and now here he is. A month and a half too late.“I’m seeing someone,” you say stiffly, trying to pretend your whole body isn’t singing with joy and finally-requited love.
Relationships: Magnus Burnsides/Taako
Comments: 5
Kudos: 32





	No Space, Wrong Time

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was a request from my friend Sage, who gave me the first three sentences as a prompt!

You’d been waiting a hundred and thirteen years for this dumbass to kiss you, and now here he is. A month and a half too late.

“I’m seeing someone,” you say stiffly, trying to pretend your whole body isn’t singing with joy and finally-requited love. You’re starting to regret your “my personal life is nobody’s fucking business” policy. You’re not a “regret” kind of guy, but right now, that self-assured part of you seems so, so far away.

He’s looking at you. He’s staring at you. You’re frozen, torn between this deep, long-awaited love and the new, burgeoning thing that you’ve discovered. You’re also torn between pissing off the fucking Grim Reaper and hurting one of the strongest men you’ve ever met. 

But, no, you can see in his big brown eyes--you’ve already hurt him. He’s trying to hide it but you can see it clear as day. You’ve been studying his face for so, so long. He’s no good at hiding things from you. You worry that, maybe, you’re just as easy to read.

“Oh,” he says. His voice is low, quiet. He’s not usually like this. It unnerves you. You have the urge to throw your arms around him, but even now you can’t make yourself show your hand. Vulnerability doesn’t seem like an option. 

“Sorry,” he says.

He’s still so close to you, you can feel him there, inches away. You close your eyes for a single, seemingly eternal moment and wrench your locked limbs back into motion. You tear yourself away from that glorious moment.

“I know, I know, everyone loves me, it’s flattering, really,” you say. You can’t look him in the eyes, not right now. So you look at your nails, feigning the vanity that you so love about yourself. You think you might be a little afraid of how unlike your usual self you feel. You don’t know if you’ve ever reeled at anything, for one. 

In the back of your mind, a little voice asks: does Kravitz do this to you? You don’t know if it’s a fair question, but fuck, you know the answer.

Kravitz excites you, you remind yourself. Kravitz makes you happy. Different happy. You shouldn’t even be thinking about this. A hundred and thirteen years. You don’t like arguing with yourself. Self assured is the only M.O. you’ve really had for...well, a couple hundred years now. You turn your body away from him--just the littlest bit--still pretending to marvel at yourself. You’re Taako, you should be actually marveling at yourself. How dare he do this to you.

And how dare he do this to you now, while the whole of Faerun crashes down around you. While your sister falls to the earth and Merle runs to the Voidfish. Right now, right in the middle of the end of the world, this is the moment he chooses?

“Oh,” he says, “so Lup was talking to you, not Barry.” He seems as determined not to meet your eyes as you are not to meet his. You almost want to laugh. 

“Listen, my sister is badass, but she’s not death,” you say with a chuckle. You almost feel like yourself now that the moment is ticking away, slipping through your fingers and into The Past. But you don’t want to let it go; you can’t.

To hell with the apocalypse. You can’t face death just yet.

You throw your arms around him. His lips are warm and soft. He’s sturdy and strong, but your weight seems enough to unsteady him. He stumbles back a few steps. You know you’ve caught him off guard and it makes you smile--after all, he started it. How is he stunned? How did he not know? You suppose that you’re really not that easy to read after all. 

And then he’s kissing you back. He twines his fingers in your hair and holds you like he’s never letting you go. His body is just slightly off from the one you’ve known (and loved). You can tell by the softness of his damp fingers against your skin. They’re not calloused and worn with the marks of a hundred fights and the imprint of an axe’s handle; they hardly hold memory of awls and chisels and knives. But they’re his.

He smells familiar at least: like sweat and soft leather and inexplicably like woodshavings. You breathe in deep--breathe him in--like you’ll never get another chance. Well, like the world is ending.  
It’s almost funny to you, but then the world rattles with a thunderous, crashing boom, and suddenly it doesn’t seem like such a good joke. He pulls away from you and looks up, into the sky which has gone dark and shimmers with facets of colors and light. You don’t want to listen, you don’t want to end this moment which you’ve waited so long for. He looks back down and meets your gaze. In any other moment you would be afraid of looking foolish but...not right now. His eyes are so soft, and his lips so close.

“Wait, I thought-” he starts to say. You shake your head. You know it’s dumb, but you’re just a dumb wizard, right? 

“Yeah, well I didn’t, okay?” you say. You hope you sound like yourself. You hope you don’t sound desperate. “I know what I said, but that’s a problem for future Taako, so please...”

But he shakes his head. “This isn’t how this should happen,” he says.

“I’m not going to argue with that, but listen,” you say. You close your eyes while you speak--half so you don’t have to see the concern etched so deeply into his face. “This is how it is happening, and I don’t know if we’re going to be alive in an hour, so I don’t exactly want to put a pin in it.” 

His face is so close to yours that you can hardly even see the Hunger. Two of the things that you’ve agonized over for decades, so close together. So inextricably linked. For a split second you wonder if things would have been different if the relics hadn’t worked. After all, he had a wife and now you have Kravitz and you want to scream and you want to shake Lucretia and-

“I’m not giving up on this,” he says. “I just don’t want to give up on this world, either.” He says it like he’s not sure you feel the same.

“Just give me this moment,” you whisper as you pull him closer. “You can go save Fisher and Junior and I’ll jump off the side of this fucking moonbase, but can we have just a little longer?” You don’t want to beg. There are a lot of things you don’t want to do right now. You don’t want to hurt Kravitz. You don’t want to be away from Lup. You don’t want to fight the Hunger again. You don’t want to save the world right now.

And he doesn’t tell you yes in so many words.

Instead, he kisses you. You lean into him and he puts one hand on the small of your back and you lean in further. A howl of wind washes over you and you feel your hat slipping, but without a single beat, he catches it. You tangle your fingers in his curls and wonder how such a good man, such a soft man (emotionally, yes, but also good lord his hair, and how on earth does he manage to maintain all those feathersaa?), always pretends to be so rough and gruff. 

Perhaps he’s a bit like a cannoli? Since they’re hard-shelled on the outside, and they’re sweet on the inside and the shell doesn’t cover all of the sweet. Yeah, you think...you’re in love with this cannoli man. He pulls you closer though and all thoughts of hard shelled foods slip completely from your mind. 

You can feel the air being squeezed out of you. Magnus’ arms are strong and warm and comforting, and the way that he holds you tells you everything about how he feels right now. You kind of love it--but then again, you’re a bit of a beanpole, and it’s starting to hurt. For a minute, you wonder if it's only fair for this to hurt you, too. But no, you're not heartless enough to pretend that this isn't confusing and painful for you, and you're not self-indulgently dramatic enough to justify a broken rib. 

“Magnus,” you breathe out. Suddenly, his lips are gone and his arms are light against your body and he is painfully, distinctly separate from you. You didn’t want this, you’re still not ready to let go--or, be let go, as it is.

“We should-” he starts, gesturing out towards the Hunger-darkened sky. 

“Yeah,” you say. You have so many other things that you also want to say, but none of them comes out. “Yeah.” 

But he doesn’t move away. He takes your hand instead, cupping it with both of his as he stares intently at you. Your body is numb with emotion and the ache of his presence and you’re standing half-frozen trying to pretend that this is all normal or okay or something that it isn’t. And he’s looking through you now into his thoughts. You can see him teetering on the edge of something and so you wait  
for an impossibly long moment.

“I had a wife,” he says. His voice is the same quiet that it was when he said “oh” just barely two minutes ago. “I have some shit I need to figure out about this. But,” he continues, returning to himself and meeting your eyes with an intensity that makes your knees go weak. “I want to do that figuring, okay?”

“I’m not going to die, okay, I have magic, I’ll be fine,” you say. Your voice is just about a perfect imitation of itself. He smiles and you both know that the moment is over; replaced with a promise to make sure Future Taako and Future Magnus get to figure out what comes next.

So you run towards the edge of Bureau of Balance’s moon base full-tilt, butterflies in your stomach, and leap into the unknown.


End file.
